mad in pursuit journal

DISPATCHED FROM THE CROSSROADS, AT THE intersection OF science and philosophy

It's all over the news: Jesus tombs found!
Along with his wife and child!!! (Did the "DaVinci
Code" get it right???) See the James Cameron documentary "The
Lost Tomb of Jesus" on the Discovery Channel!

Yawn.

The whole thing has already been debunked as
wishful thinking. But my question is this: what
difference would it make one way or another? How would marriage and fatherhood undermine
the wisdom of what Jesus taught?

Or maybe it's a good thing that the news give a bit of coverage
to J.C. — maybe he's not as newsworthy as Britany or Anna
Nicole — but he does have a little of that celebrity buzz.

Interesting historical note: Between 500 B.C.
and 500 A.D. all the great religions of the world were founded.
From Greece to India, secular city states had arisen.

Dislodged from the soil as well as from the old necessities
of the hunt, a rather sophisticated urban population had appeared,
with a certain leisure, considerable luxury, and time, consequently,
for neuroses. Inevitably the new initiators [religious founders]
appeared, who had, themselves, in their own experience, faced
out the new anxieties: the first systematic psychologists of
all time and in many ways, perhaps, the best. And their basic
tools were everywhere the same: the old ritual lore, inherited
from [the old-time religions]. However, now the chief concern
was no longer magical (the weather, crops, abundance of goods,
and long years), but psychological (... harmonization of the
psyche) and sociological (the integration of the individual with
a new society based on a secular... tradition). [Joseph
Campbell, "The Masks of God: Oriental Mythology]

Jesus was one among many sages who became popular during that
busy era — wandering, teaching sages, "each with his cluster
of devotees and each supposing himself to have solved — once
and for all — the mystery of sorrow" [Campbell].

Here's my point: there is a common storyline
for all the World Saviors who rose during this period: scion of
a royal line, miraculously born, whose childhood deeds proclaim
his divine character, etc. Among all these guys (Buddha, Mohammed,
etc), Jesus is the only one who didn't have a wife and child. In
the stories of Saviors, the wife and child are considered impediments
to the Savior going off to fulfill his mission — a psychological
dilemma he needs to deals with as part of his personal journey.

So why wouldn't it make sense to try to rewrite the Jesus story
to show him as a more complex man, who needed to balance his personal
life with his job?